Labyrinth Lost (Brooklyn Brujas #1)(33)

“My powers don’t work like that,” he says. “I can’t hold it for long.”

“You have to!”

He stands, holding his inked palms up to the sky. He conjures a light that halos his entire body. It pulses with energy, spreading all around us.

For a while, it works. The light kisses my skin and warms the cold breath coming from the silver river. Then he starts to weaken. He grinds his teeth, like he’s holding on to a great weight. He falters.

And so do I.

My head throbs where I hit it. My thoughts are a messy stream of faces. My family. Oros. The dead of the river. I can’t tell if the voices I hear are in my head or not. Except for his voice. Nova says my name. It’s a desperate thing, and I know if I don’t focus, we’re lost. I row and row and row, despite the fire in my muscles and the pain in head.

“Alejandra.” The voice I heard before comes again, like someone searching for me in a crowd. I can almost see her. It isn’t coming from the river of souls. It’s something else—someone else. When I look up, hoping to see her familiar face, all I see is death.

The skeletal, silver face lunges at me. The boat has come to a slow, painful drag. The withered creatures are pulling apart from their eternal soup and clamoring for us. They cling to the oars as I struggle to row. They cling to the top of the stern and the golden dragon’s head at the bow.

Nova screams my name. With his magic exhausted, he picks up the mace again and swings. I channel the magic inside me, but it’s thinning and weak, and I can’t get ahold of it. What’s the point of being what I am if I can’t use it when I need it to save my life?

The hungry soul bends over the side of the boat, its body a disfigured, warped mass of bone. I can feel the cold of its being, the angry force that keeps it moving. Those deathly hands reach for me, inching closer to my skin. This can’t end before we’ve even started.

My voice is a horse scream and I grab the soul. I hold its skull. It’s like nothing I would have ever thought touching a soul would feel like. The skin on my palms bubbles and burns. When I close my eyes, I see my mother wrapping her arms around me after I burned my hands on the stove. I know that’s impossible, but I feel her now, warm and comforting. And when I open my eyes, I know it’s the memory I needed to channel my magic back from its hiding place.

Power erupts from my chest in a blast of fire. I can feel the heat of it on my face. The magic rushes through my veins and lights up my senses. With all my strength, I push the creature back into the river, and it writhes and cries out in the terrible wail of the damned.

Above us, the sky crackles; the lightning looks more like the sparks at the end of fried cables. Rain descends on us, hard and fast. Without oars, the river is an angry rush that starts to push us off our path.

“Alex—help me.”

My red, raw hands tremble. Nova can’t fight them all, and it took so much of my energy just to push one of them away.

“There has to be another way,” I shout.

The winds get stronger now and carry the whisper of my name with them. I can’t see her, but I can feel her spirit in the breeze that wraps around me. She’s been calling me since we got on the river. Aunt Rosaria. I know it’s her. I can’t tell if she’s haunting me or guiding me.

I pull on my magic. I reach out to the wind and grab it. The wind itself latches on to my power. The gust is so strong that our boat is lifted up into the air and away from the silver hands that grasp for us. So strong it nearly knocks me overboard, but Nova holds on to me like an anchor.

“Nova!”

He takes my hand, and I let my power flow, our magics melding together like metals under fire. Up in the air, we’re safe. I wish I could look at us from a distance—a flying, golden boat sailing across the River Luxaria.

“This is amazing!” he shouts over the moaning wind.

I squeeze his hand as we climb higher and higher, and I think there is nothing as wonderful as feeling like you can fly.

“We’re not slowing down.” Panic takes over my sense of triumph. “We’re about to pass the shore!”

I let go of Nova’s hand. The wind cuts out around me, and I fight to rein it back in.

“Just a little longer, Alex,” Nova tells me. “You can land this thing.”

“It isn’t a plane,” I shout.

“We have to jump,” he says.

I shake my head and cling to the sides of the boat. We spin in a funnel of air. Doubt clouds my mind. I had it under control, and now I’ve lost it. The black beach is fast approaching.

“Hold on!” he shouts. For the second time today, we’re falling.

My muscles seize and spasm from the recoil of my magic, so I’m unable to shout, I can’t!

But when he wraps his arms around me, I realize he isn’t telling me to hold on to my magic or the ship.

He means, “Hold on to me.”





16


Like a shadow, she crept across the land.

Like a weed, she took hold and grew.

—On the Devourer, from the journal of Rosaria Vargas

The first time I saw my dead aunt Rosaria, she was beautiful.

Brujas don’t lay their dead alone in wooden boxes. We build them shrines and equip them for what comes next. When I was little, I thought it was a grand thing. I didn’t realize the bodies were dead. I didn’t realize we filled their mouths with flowers or put gold coins on their eyelids so they wouldn’t reach the afterlife empty-handed. Little eyes don’t see the consequences of adults.